Sophia Rosenthal

Golden Hour

21 February –9 March 2025

Standpoint presented Sophia Rosenthal’s first London solo exhibition ‘Golden Hour’.

Born in South Korea, raised in the Philippines, and now residing in the UK, Sophia Rosenthal’s practice is deeply influenced by her multicultural upbringing. Highlighting themes of loss, longing and fragmented recollections that accompany a history of migration, her paintings are shaped further by memory loss within her own family.

Produced during a ten-week residency at Standpoint, this new body of work explores the interplay between painting and memory, drawing inspiration from personal photographs and using painting as a site of experimentation. Influenced by post-impressionism, cinema, and the materiality of New Figuration painters, Sophia’s poetic paintings reimagine snapshots of childhood, family, and place.

Using layered, fragmented compositions, unexpected textures, and intense colour palettes, Sophia creates intimate spaces that reflect emergent qualities of memory that often unsettles interpretation, riding the line between the calm, disquiet and humour. Through the slow and chance-induced processes of painting, Sophia is able to explore memory as impressions that continuously unfold.

Alluding to the warm fleeting light either during sunrise or sunset Golden Hour marks a pivotal moment in Sophia’s practice, as she delves into the reciprocity between photography and painting, creating works that are at once tender, contemplative, and evocative.

Standpoint residencies facilitate artist development and enable the production of new work in a supportive environment, encouraging artistic exchange and collective working. The residencies are designed to be flexible and responsive to the project, needs and desired outcomes of individual participants. This residency is in partnership with City & Guilds of London Art School.

Sophia Rosenthal (b.1996, South Korea) graduated with a Distinction in MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School, and is the winner of the Standpoint Artist Residency Prize 2024. Sophia was artist in residence at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives (2018) and exhibited with Tate St Ives (2018); The Poly (Falmouth, 2018); The Cornish Bank (Falmouth, 2021); Assembly Point Studios (selected graduate works by Saccha Craddock and Jesse Leroy-Smith, Peckham, London, 2019); and at the open studios at the Academy of Fine Art in Venice as an Erasmus grantee (2018). In 2024, Sophia participated in groups shows, Entranced Essence (RuptureXibit, London); Sprung24 (Prema Arts Centre, Dursley); and Art Lark (Electro Studios Project Space, St Leonards on Sea).

Shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, Sophia won The Judith Tucker Memorial Prize (selected by Lubaina Himid, Griselda Pollock and Harriet Tarlo), and The Blyth Gallery Award to exhibit a solo show at Imperial College in the following academic year 2025/26. Sophia was part of their touring show to BayArt (Cardiff), Thames-side Studios (London), and Yorkshire Artspace (Sheffield).

Image: Brief Apricity, 2025, oil on wood panel, 21.0 x 29.7 cm